Originally Posted by ppc

A recumbent with two 26" wheels. Sorry about the shortcut.




Oh yes, I meant downhill, or with a good back wind, but what I meant was, with shorter cranks, you can keep pedalling when you reach higher speeds and go even faster, as opposed to having to let gravity alone propel you, or max out, because you can't spin any faster, which is frustrating.

My personal rule of thumb is that for every centimeter you take out of a crank, you roughly gain 10 rpm in spinning and all your chainrings behave like they have 2 more teeth. So for example, if you have a 44T chainring and 170mm cranks, if you install 150mm cranks instead, the chainring now feels like a 48T ring. What's more, since you can spin faster, you can go even faster with your "virtual" 48T ring.